⊡ Human Behavior and Environmental Sustainability: Problems, Driving Forces, and Research Topics

Social and behavioral research is crucial for securing environmental sustainability and improving human living environments. To put the following articles into broader perspective, we first give an overview of worldwide developments in environmental quality and trends in resource use. Second, five general driving forces of global environmental change are distinguished: population, affluence, technology, institutions, and culture; these are considered in view of critical transitions in the evolution of human society. Third, inspired by a four-stage model approach to common resource dilemmas, our introduction describes this issue's specific topics for research and policy support concerning environmental sustainability at different scale levels. Finally, the necessity of multidisciplinary collaboration and desirable developments in environmental psychology are discussed.     

Environmental Psychology and Sustainable Development: Expansion, Maturation, and Challenges

In this summary article, some advances of, the potential for, and challenges faced by environmental psychology as a contributor to sustainability science are outlined. In its first 40 years, it has evolved from a discipline primarily—but never solely—concerned with proximate architecture to one that adds concern with larger-scale issues, particularly sustainability. This growth of interest has in turn led to increased interest within it in public policy, technology, cooperation with other disciplines, multilevel analyses of problems, the ingestion of new ideas, and concern with the health of the biotic and ecological world. Some challenges are that the central proponents of "sustainability science" itself have not acknowledged environmental psychology as a potential contributor, the field is comparatively young, that it needs to explore biotic and ecological issues more, needs to help discriminate facts from nonfacts about environmental problems, and needs to warn sustainability science about the daunting task of overcoming environmental numbness and self-interest in individuals. Nevertheless, there is hope: sustainability scientists, including environmental psychologists, may be Adam Smith's "invisible hand."     

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.     

Judgmental Discounting and Environmental Risk Perception: Dimensional Similarities, Domain Differences, and Implications for Sustainability

Environmental risks constitute a special category of risks because they often involve consequences that are highly uncertain, strongly delayed, occurring at distant places, and—therefore—mostly borne by others. Economic, decision–theoretic, and psychological research about the way people deal with such consequences is reviewed. Two major findings are presented: first, there is evidence that discounting mechanisms are stable across different preference dimensions (uncertainty, temporal, spatial, and social distance). Second, discount rates tend to vary across different problem domains (e.g., environmental vs. health vs. financial risks). In particular, it appears that temporal discounting is less pronounced for environmental risks than in other domains. Several factors are identified that affect the nature of the risk evaluation process, and it is argued that environmental risks differ from other risks on such factors. These environmental-risk characteristics may have important implications for policy strategies to promote environmental sustainability. Contrary to other domains, appealing to the public's long-term preferences may be successful. Also in policy making, insights from standard economic decision theory to environmental decision making should be applied with caution.     

Understandings of environmental injustice and sustainability in marginalized communities: A qualitative inquiry in Nevada

As eco‐social work practice and scholarship continues to grow, multiple frameworks are emerging to help guide the work. In this study, we interviewed 59 people affected by environmental injustice. Participants identified components within both environmental injustice and sustainability, as well as gaps that these models individually do not support. Therefore, we suggest that merging environmental justice with sustainability through centering justice (a component within environmental justice), and also finding solutions through technological advances (a component within sustainability), may best support these communities. In addition, the participants discussed the need for support, which social workers can provide.     

Globalization,financial development and economic growth: Perils on the environmental sustainability of an emerging economy

The study examines the effects of globalization, financial development, economic growth, and energy consumption on environmental sustainability in India over the period 1980–2015. The novelty of the study is the assessment of environmental sustainability in a single framework encompassing globalization, financial development, and growth effects. Findings reveal that an increased level of globalization and financial development while improving economic performance are inimical to the sustainability of the environment. In the short-run, globalization, economic growth, and increased energy consumption are contributing directly to environmental degradation, while banking sector development is impacting environmental sustainability adversely through the economic growth channel. Given the severity of the findings amidst India’s tryst with economic growth, proactive policies are warranted to encourage adaptation of greener and cleaner technologies in environmentally sustainable areas. This necessitates improved institutional quality encompassing stringent environmental standards, legal systems, property rights, corruption, financial information quality, etc., alongside the provision of incentives and subsidies to manufacturing firms undertaking technological innovations and complying with the environmental standards.     

The Sustainable Use of Resources on a Global Scale

The need to reconcile social and environmental goals for sustainable development still poses problems for policy makers in the richer parts of the world. Using the examples of domestic water and energy, this paper argues that the problems are reflected, and often magnifed, in developing countries. They arise largely from conflicts between the short-term need to alleviate poverty and longer-term objectives for environmental sustainability. The dual nature of water and energy as both social and economic goods raises questions about the most appropriate forms of provision and allocation of the utilities. It is in no one's long-term interest for developing countries to repeat the environmentally damaging mistakes of the industrialized world. But an equitable distribution of the short-term costs attached to a more environmentally responsible use of resources demands new ways of thinking about global social justice.     

The contribution of environmental,social, and governance disclosure to a sustainable economy

This article discusses ways that environmental, social, and governance disclosure can promote transition to a sustainable economy by paving the way for better business operations. It presents a conceptual analysis and identifies how environmental, social, and governance disclosures actuate corporate sustainability and contribute to a sustainable economy. It also offers a sustainability framework for companies transitioning to a sustainable economy.     

Ecosocial innovations enabling social work to promote new forms of sustainable economy

Social work research and practice that address environmental sustainability have already become prominent. However, a change in unsustainable economic structures is also urgently needed. This study explored emerging opportunities in theory and practice for a sustainable economy that are relevant to the aims of social work. As practical examples, our study concerns ‘ecosocial innovations’, i.e., social innovations that combine ecological and social goals. We analysed how these grassroots innovations in the field of social work reflect crucial shared conceptions of alternative economies. The qualitative data set comprised of 50 ecosocial innovations and six case studies in five European countries. The findings show a rich diversity of ecosocial innovations and describe how they reframe economic purposes, value economic diversity and democratise the economy. We suggest that social work might consider these practices as opportunities for collaboration, especially regarding work with people on the margins of the labour market.     

Examining the variation in local water sustainability practices

As sustainable development is becoming more important to ensure the economic success and social well-being of any government, without regard to its level, the efficient use and protection of natural resources has increased in importance. And local governments are at the forefront of developing sustainability policy in many ways. This study investigates the factors that influence the variation in local sustainability practices in one critical area, water conservation. The variation in adoption of water sustainability programs in municipalities across the U.S. is hypothesized to rely on three key factors: environmental condition, form of government, and fiscal condition. Our findings from an ordered logistic regression model indicate that municipalities with high drought level, high environmental policy priorities, and high community wealth are likely to adopt more water conservation programs.     

Beyond “linking knowledge and action”: towards a practice-based approach to transdisciplinary sustainability interventions

ABSTRACT

The imperative to “link knowledge and action” is widely invoked as a defining characteristic of sustainability research. The complexities of sustainability challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss mean that linear models of knowledge and action, where knowledge is produced first (by researchers) then “applied to” action (by policy actors), are considered insufficient. Researchers have developed more dynamic, open-ended and collaborative forms of policy engagement such as transdisciplinary and co-production research. Although promising these approaches often remain captive to linear assumptions that hinder their transformative potential. We contribute by providing a relational model of knowledge and action rooted in contemporary practice theory. A practice-based approach suggests the primary task of participants in transdisciplinary interventions is to find workable solutions to situations of dynamic complexity that are fundamentally indeterminate and unpredictable. Knowledge is not “applied to” action, but drawn upon, produced and used from within the situation at hand, allowing researchers and policy actors alike to better harness the emergent character of situational developments and outcomes. A practice-based approach provides a conceptual language that captures the experienced complexities of intervening for sustainability, reconfigures the nature of “actionable knowledge,” and identifies appropriate modes of evaluation for transdisciplinary and co-produced research.     

Environmentally Responsible Behavior: Teaching and Promoting It Effectively

The most serious long-term threat facing the world is the danger that human actions are producing irreversible harmful changes to the environmental conditions that support life on Earth. If this problem is not overcome, there may be no viable world for our descendants to inhabit. Enormous changes to human lifestyles and cultural practices may be required to reach the goal of a sustainable level of impact on the environment—i.e., one that can be maintained indefinitely. Social science courses can aid in reaching this goal by teaching about environmentally responsible behavior. Such teaching should provide sound information and strengthen motivation and behavioral skills that are necessary to make the needed changes in behavior and lifestyles. This paper discusses major obstacles to the goal of sustainability, describes a variety of motivational approaches toward accomplishing it, and proposes that we should view the achievement of sustainable living patterns as a superordinate goal—a war against the common enemy of an uninhabitable world.     

Narrating Sustainability in Canadian Health Care Reform Discourse

In Canada, as in other industrialized welfare states, definitions of health system sustainability reflect different goals and correspondingly diverse ways of understanding exactly what is to be sustained and how. In this article, we report on results from a survey of documents and groups involved in and/or concerned about sustainability of the healthcare system. We identify four broad narratives of sustainability in Canadian healthcare reform discourse, and explore what these different sustainability narratives tell us about the character and contours of these often‐fractious debates. We argue that sustainability itself may not be a paradigm shift, as has been suggested, but a plot device that helps to steer the story in a particular direction, ‘black‐boxing’ certain aspects of context and emphasizing others.     

Policy Climates and Reductions in Automobile Use*

Objectives. This study examines how national environmental policy influences individual car‐driving behavior in the European Union. Methods. Using the International Social Survey: Environment II in conjunction with the 2001 and 2002 Environmental Sustainability Indices, we analyze the relationship between macro‐level policy indicators and the reported reduction of individual car driving for environmental reasons, controlling for meso‐ and micro‐level factors. Results. Our results show that individuals report a greater likelihood of driving less for environmental reasons when they live in nations that adopt strong pro‐environmental policies, even when such policies are not directly related to car use. Conclusions. Our finding that a national policy climate focused on environmental sustainability is associated with pro‐environmental behaviors among individuals in that nation encourages us to believe that greater international cooperation on environmental issues (such as the Kyoto Protocol) and increased strength of domestic environmental policies will positively change individual behavior.     

The practices of collective action: Practice theory,sustainability transitions and social change

Developing theory for understanding social transformation is essential for environmental sustainability, yet mainstream accounts of collective action neglect the dynamics of daily life. Theories of practice have proved generative for the study of sustainable consumption but struggle to accommodate the roles of collective actors, strategic action and purposive collective projects in social change. In response, this paper develops a practice theoretical account of collective action pertinent to processes of large scale social change, with specific focus on transitions towards sustainability. We consider three ideal types of collective—bureaucratic organisations, groupings and latent networks—and, drawing on existing social theoretical resources that are ontologically compatible with a practice account, explore the kinds of practices and arrangements which compose them. Processes concerning strategy, bureaucracy, management, social worlds and collective identity are identified as important combinations of practices and arrangements. We suggest a key contribution of practice theory has been to identify a type of collective action we call dispersed collective activity, and we suggest how this type of activity may give rise to collectives. We conclude by suggesting further development for the realisation of the project's contribution to the analysis of sustainability transitions.     

The relationship between social work and environmental sustainability: Implications for interdisciplinary practice

Schmitz CL, Matyók T, James C, Sloan LM. The relationship between social work and environmental sustainability: Implications for interdisciplinary practice The Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development, established by the United Nations in 1983, links peace, security, development and the environment claiming that war, poverty and structural violence result in the oppression and degradation of the human community as well as the physical environment. Likewise, human rights and social and environmental justice are intertwined, and social work, as a profession that collaborates across disciplines and within communities, is uniquely situated to provide leadership in the field of environmental studies. Its strong focus on human rights, social justice and community building creates a sound base from which to engage in the collaborative, creative, interactional processes required for environmental practice. This article seeks to discern a model for environmental social work within the context of interdisciplinary practice with peace and conflict workers and through the integration of inclusive models of economic development.     

The coupling of rural communities with their economic base: agriculture,localism and the discourse of self-sufficiency

In the context of the changing socio-economic position of agriculture, this paper is concerned with the governmental relations associated with managing the decoupling of society from economy and the ensuing question about how the economic base can be adequately utilised to ensure continued material sustenance for the community. Central to these challenges is the role of social policy in co-ordinating processes of change against society's capacity for change, taking into account the increasing realisation that the both the capacity of the planet and its economies are finite. Localism is increasingly being promoted as a key social strategy which communities can use to address their needs to secure material sustenance. Under this form of localism, communities are required to secure their own socio-economic sustainability by taking an entrepreneurial approach to developing their local assets and resources. Societies are facing questions about the viability of both interventionist and market-based approaches for ensuring the continued sustenance of given communities. But, since localism does not have the capacity effectively to deal with the question of the carrying capacity of the economic or environmental base at a societal level, one must query the extent to which faith can be maintained in localism as an effective strategy for the future.     

Imagining the ecosocial within social work

Aiming to explore how the ecosocial is imagined within social work research, this article engages with understandings of the relationship between the social and ecological realms when responding to the call for sustainability. A theoretical framework offering five possible imaginations of the ecosocial was developed: the holistic; the anthropocentric conflictual; the anthropocentric compatible; the ‘ecocentric’ conflictual; and the ‘ecocentric’ compatible. The material consists of international peer-reviewed articles referring to the ecosocial. The result reveals that the imagination of the ecosocial is heterogeneous. However, the holistic and anthropocentric compatible imaginations are common, while ‘ecocentric’ and conflictual understandings are rare, which confirms that nurturing social and ecological sustainability does not entail conflicting interests or rivalry but rather the opposite. This implies not only an ongoing widening of the notion of sustainability, in which the idea of limitations is re-installed, but also a possible re-definition of ‘the social’ so as to include the non-human.     

Religious Values and Environmental Concern: Harmony and Detachment*

Objective. The thought that environmental concern is rooted in religious beliefs and values has been raised by many writers. Different claims have been made about whether the nature of this relationship is positive or negative, and empirical evidence is mixed. In line with research on attitudes and values, this study examines the hypothesis that unless religious values are mentally accessible, they will not affect judgments of environmental issues. Method. Two environmental issues, genetically modified crops and more traditional environmental issues, for example, air pollution from traffic, are chosen to represent accessibility and nonaccessibility, respectively. A two‐wave data set from a national survey is analyzed. Results. The findings support the suggestion that religious values will affect the judgment of environmental threats of the first, but not the second, issue. Conclusion. These findings suggest that situational cues partly determine which values embodied in religion will influence environmental attitudes.     

Professionals' attitudes about victims of child sexual abuse: implications for collaborative child protection teams

In responding to victims of child sexual abuse, considerable attention has been given to multidisciplinary collaborative response teams. Recent evidence, however, suggests that team members may be divided by differences in attitudes towards victims and offenders and about the causes and consequences of abuse. This paper draws on a larger study of the various professionals who make up one child abuse response system in Newfoundland, Canada. In particular, the paper focuses on social workers, teachers and the police, and their views about the characteristics and credibility of sexual abuse victims, and the extent to which they attribute to the victim some responsibility for the abuse. Data for the study were collected in two stages: key informant interviews; and a survey of social workers, teachers and police. The analysis includes an interpretation of the role of gender, professional group membership and experience with cases. The most striking finding is the extent to which the child's age and behaviour appears to influence differentially attitudes about the victims' credibility. These differences complicate multidisciplinary collaborative initiatives since it would appear that those with the least real case experience, and the least knowledge about the relationship between abuse and behaviour, are the ones most likely to be the first point of contact for reports or disclosures.